Sunday, August 30, 2015

just make up your mind already

The Royal Melbourne Show deadline for submissions is looming ever closer, and despite my firm intention of focusing and getting mine complete I seem to have made very little progress.The fact that I have changed my idea for the socks entry not once but twice since then has most likely not aided this endeavour.I read two very good blog posts about Show entries and judging criteria over at needle and spindle recently that made me rethink the Torrent socks as candidates for my entry in the sock category. The openness of the lacework on this pattern is beautiful in my opinion, but I can see how that might be judged lower due to potential suitability for use as intended? I will finish them for myself and am already so happy with the colour, yarn and pattern combination, but decided to quickly start an alternative for the Show.

Gladys is a free sock pattern that caught my eye and seemed like a good candidate. The pattern replicates aran ganseys (practical) and looked easy to knit up during the daily commute (convenient!). So I grabbed some of my stash of Lang Jawoll 75/25, which is a wonderful, sturdy sock yarn (suitable) and cast on.

It was all going swimmingly - I was liking the gauge of this yarn on 2.25mm needles very much - until I started the gansey pattern. Whilst I love the marled effect of the yarn and I'm not perturbed by it diffusing the patternwork a little, I started to worry again that it would be judged down for this? I persevered for a bit longer but finally decided, no; it wasn't the best choice. So back I went to my collection of sock patterns, and I have finally settled on Denmark, from Nancy Bush's beautiful book 'Knitting on the Road'. It's a lovely Viking-esqe cable pattern, with a single round of nupps just after the completion of the ribbing on the cuff.

The pattern calls for sportweight on 3.25mm, but looking at the stitch count I felt confident that I could use fingering weight with 2.5mm and still have them fit my foot well. I'm using Patonyle, because you can't get more "Australian sock" than Patonyle, and so far I'm very happy. I think I've finally settled, but now I need to hope I can get them completed by September 9th!Update on the other items - the shawl edging is nearly at the halfway mark, but the tea cosy remains un-seamed and un-pompom-ed. I obviously enjoy the stress of last-minute flurries...